


Bloody Waves

by antheunis011



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:59:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2394404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheunis011/pseuds/antheunis011
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will... when I think one good enough</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fleeing Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note
> 
> So... please take the time off your day to read through this short little text.
> 
> So how did this story come to life? Well originally, I had wanted to make a rewrite of ''Bloody Storm, Burning Waves'', which was originally written by PENTUFURY, and I stumbled upon it on Uzumakipedia. I started my own adaptation of the story... that went south due to my writing style of using too many words when it REALLY isn't needed and trying to rush things ahead. I sincerely hope that this work will be a large improvement over the previous try.
> 
> There is something that I feel needs to be pointed out. The BSBW is as much of an inspiration for this story as is Naruto cannon, meaning that it is 'mine' in a manner of speaking, not PENTFURY's. While I legally don't own jack shit of it since I ain't no Kishimito, I sure as hell own the idea in my head now.
> 
> On a side note, you really can forget about anything that happened after the Invasion of Pain as having any real value in 'reality', besides some clan history. Perhaps Rinnegan is still Sharingan times uber, perhaps it is not. Perhaps there is Madara and Obito, perhaps not. This is AU!
> 
> Most of the things after the Pain-arc don't really make any sense and are all slowly growing into the realm of DBZ dick measuring contests.
> 
> I mean just look at the latest Manga!
> 
> Warning!
> 
> This story will be rated Mature. It will be Uzumakicentric and it will be Uzumakicest. I considered the ban on sex scenes an idiocy, despite the fact that I have yet to write a single one. Because of that, I'l be posting the story on both Fanfiction and Archive of our Own.
> 
> I wouldn't want to be another author in the large community of writers that lost their stories just because the oh so wise admins saw fit to remove them cs they had sexual scenes, which is kinda going to be an important factor later down the line. I mean really, when you see that there are thousands upon thousands of Yaoi fics with nothing but fucking scenes in them... and the admins go around deleting straight fics... yeah.

* * *

****" _No matter what happens, who you turn out to be…I will always love you_ …"** **

**Bloody Waves**

**Volume 1 –** _Uzumaki; Hai ka Īe !?_

 **Chapter 1 –** Fleeing Reality

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

**PLAY :** _Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 Uprising - Yuriko's Theme OST_

_Konohagakure no Sato..._

It was a festive day, a joyful occasion for the inhabitants of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, the strongest of the world's shinobi superpowers.

Everyone, from the simplest of shopkeepers to the best of the elites knew what the day was today, they all knew what was happening today. They also knew that the following celebration would be well worth it. As if bellowed Mother Nature herself knew about it, the air that all living things in this world breathe, the unseen mass of nothing floating within the walls of the chattering village had been fresher then ever, smelling of distant pastries and the scent of life.

The anticipation was just around the corner where people could find the rudimentary fireworks being setting up.

The prices of goods at the fresh produce and all other things similar and dissimilar markets were at an all-time low. The businessmen of trade and fortune smiled at their costumers, getting responsive smiles back at them. Everyone was in a happy mood. The shopkeepers stood, and in some rare cases, sat behind their counters and their respective cashiers, grinning and smirking a tad bit wider.

But what could make the whole village so uppity like that?

The knowledge that the youngest of minds who lived in the village were in for a successful and purposeful future. A future in which the younger generations, kids not even 13 years of age, would be taught and mentored in the ways of the ninja arts, techniques and beliefs that have been passed down within the Hidden Leaf Village through generations by their wiser and older counterparts, all the way down from the teachings of the Shodaime Hokage, Senju Hashirama.

Such young children would go on to become the new shields of the village in the eyes of the public (and the sheep).

They would signify their hopes and their dreams.

They would become the carriers of the Will of Fire! It had to burn strong in them.

Cheerful songs and rancorous laughter filled dances that played to the tune of the ninja nation's folk songs were sure to fill the streets of the village after sun-fall, and more than one shot of sake was guaranteed to be taken by all the male parents present when the partying would start and the festivities began, when the adults would sit down to laugh and fill their stomachs with food and drinks in the warm presence of their friends.

Large, proud and hope filled smiles adorned the many faces of parents as they laughed and loudly chatted away with one another in the front courtyard of the Ninja Academy. They constantly congratulated their kids for passing the graduation exams and becoming genin ninja, the lowest of the low and greener than the fresh grass that prevailed through some areas of the village. Hugs and kisses were freely given while proud words of encouragement were offered and showered upon the youngest of the strongest. Metal plated symbols of loyalty to their born village proudly stood on the foreheads of these new ninjas, murderers and thieves to be, signaling their destinies as members of the prestigious and valiant Shinobi Corps of Konoha.

People stood en mass before one of the symbolic structures of their village, painted in tacky whites and drab yellows with lively roofs of red that offered quite a sight in the evenings, what with the reflection of orange and red sunlight that bounced off the tiles' paved rooftops. It was a structure that inspired loyalty and love for both the community and the village that the ninjas would serve, a propaganda monolith is what it was in its truest form.

To most, the mid-day Konoha sun seemed to be shining brighter than ever before in joy as it graced the most recent Academy graduates and their families with warmth and comfort of its heavenly lights.

A sign of good fortune and well deserved fates, the oldest of the villagers said that it was.

Kids were cheering. They were finally going to be real ninjas!

They will breathe out fire balls and make things explode, move faster than normal eyes could see and keep the 'peace' throughout the land.

The birds were singing and chirping in what had to be the purest expression of joy, a chorus of these little animals making up a single well-tuned melody.

Everyone was happy, everyone was celebrating.

Everyone was enjoying their time with family.

But for one, it was as if the world was mocking her with all its might.

"Look, it's that girl we are not supposed to talk about."

"She's so useless."

"More like unpleasant."

"It's that kid again, why does Hokage-sama even allow it to run around?"

"Yes, I know! What if it suddenly decided to attack us? What will we do then?"

"It could turn on us at any second, remember what it carries inside. Its not normal!"

"She's a freak!"

"And they believed that it could become a ninja!"

Sitting on a little, shadowed, lone swing in the Academy courtyard, all alone like the creature most unloved in the world, a girl with a head of yellow and eyes of starling blue did her best to hold back the tears that threatened to escape her eyes. Yet even as her will braved the fall, treacherous moisture collected at the ends of her eyes already while little sniffles of sadness and loneliness escaped her nose.

With her enhanced sense of hearing, she could hear them whisper and talk.

She could always hear them.

The villagers were always so mean to her, calling her unpleasant names and yelling at her when she tried to make friends, saying that she was no good and that nobody would like her and that she should just leave them be, that her parents didn't even want her and that she should just be locked away in a cage.

She wanted to show them, to make them respect her, but she couldn't show them anymore.

Because she had failed.

Third strike and she's out.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_Konohagakure no Sato..._

It was eerily quiet along a single road near the tall and, need I note, wide-open gates of Konohagakure no Sato. The gates of Konoha were built out of aging and enduring trees surrounding the village on seemingly all sides. This was how their tree-huggers nickname came to be.

The wooden buildings that were lined alongside the street flickered with bright yellow lights from torches and lanterns.

Where there was light there were of course shadows, the phantasms of light flickering near the alleyways that had been one girl's playgrounds for as long as she had been alive and able to stand on all twos.

These were the homes of those people who have not gone to the center of the village to enjoy the festivities there, those that were few and far between.

Not everyone in the village was for the bright lights and the loud music.

The moon was shining up in the sky, illuminating the world in pale light.

Amongst the silence that befell the dusty street there was one child.

This child was walking down the lonely streets with nothing to do and no one to care for her, a fate set for her due to a series of events that had taken several wrenches to achieve. A single, isolated girl with a head of bright yellow hair skulked around the moonlit village.

Her head was slightly bent forward while her gaze was firmly set on the ground before her with only the rhythmic taps of her sandal clad feet giving her company. Nobody else would bother to give her the time of day anyway. Every so often, the gaze would waver and glide towards the tall... inspiring gates of the village... and the free world beyond them.

Mito Uzumaki's brain was a chaos of negative thoughts.

Bad things for her mental health that, all things considered, should never have been allowed to fester in a jinchuriki's psyche.

But people would say that ignorance is bliss.

Oh how foolish they are.

Disappointment and doubt.

Fear and loneliness.

Anger and most of all... nothing.

Emptiness.

Mito's heart was empty.

There was no one that she could talk to in the village, no one to turn to for her troubles and no one for her to say 'I'm Home' to when she arrived at her lonely apartment in downtown Konoha, the only thing that she had to her name besides the clothes on her back and the sandals on her feet.

The Ichirakus were nice and all to the young girl, but they were civilians and they were merchants foremost. As young as she was, even she knew that she shouldn't... and couldn't, put a larger burden on them than she already was by being associated with the lovely father-daughter duo. Mito had long since learned that the villagers could do many stupid things out of spite simply if she was somehow concerned, they were both resentful and spiteful creatures for something that she did not do.

Yet out of all her emotions, only one remained strongest out of all of them.

She felt betrayed.

She had worked so hard over the last 5 years to become a ninja and the girl had placed all her hopes and all of her dreams into getting that headband.

If she was a powerful ninja, the village would have to respect and acknowledge her, right?

As the moon traversed the night sky and as the stars twinkled mysteriously, time moved on. Soon young Mito came to a stop in the middle of a garden lined street. Her head slightly dipped upwards, her eyebrows arched down into a scowl and her lips folded into a thin frown. All that stood before her were the tall and imposing wooden gates of Konoha, opened as if inviting her to pass through.

The only barrier between herself and the world at large where new people would be waiting were the enduring gates of grandeur that greeted the foreign merchants and businessmen alike who brought in exotic goods and services with their fabulous staunch and the village's enemies with an unyielding defense.

Well, unyielding defense unless the enemies are 60 stories tall monster foxes with the power to cause tsunamis with a flick of their tails and level down mountains by jumping on them.

The hallmark point, one that she could never cross for some reason, jiji always said not to.

A shadow skirted across her vision.

Mito's lips trembled and her shoulders heaved in sadness.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_Konohagakure no Sato..._

The following next day, after all the celebration and the drinking, the singing and the dancing and the general hype about the newly graduated ninjas had passed, the very much hung-over villagers woke up to blasting sunlight streaming in through the curtains and loud cheers of kids that were slowly making their lives a tad bit more painful.

More than one teenager had found himself in a foreign bed, stained with the evidence of their *ahem, nightly activities.

As the shopkeeps re-opened their stores and as the civvies of the ninja village walked the streets, some of them could find their esteemed lord Hokage the Third, a powerful man known (and feared) across the continent as The God of Shinobi - and to a lesser extent as The Professor - walking down their merry streets, seemingly taking a relaxing walk through the constantly crowded streets of his prosperous village. A village founded on the hopes and dreams for peace of two clans.

What actually happened in reality was that the Old Man was only trying to escape the blasted paperwork that seemed to be set up to rue him one day. Curse you Nidaime Hokage for casting the plight of bureaucracy upon him, he shall have his vengeance when he makes it to the Pure World!

As soon as the Sandaime Hokage, with all of his pipe smoking wisdom would beat and sign one form, two new would appear in its place with what could only be true magic, the stuff of kid tales and bedtime stories. There was no logical and conceivable way that his secretary could move faster than his eyes could follow to replenish all those stacks... mountains of paper that needed his note and oversight.

It was a very good thing that the village was surrounded by trees and was in for a steady supply of paper or else they would have long since run out of forms to write in and currencies to pay in.

Kami only knows how the Tsuchikage dealt with paperwork in his own village.

The Old Man, being the kind and loving grandfather figure of the village that he was, simply smiled and nodded with his Hokage hat tipped head as he passed the people by on the streets, greeting the villagers of his village in their day to day lives and sometimes stopping by to talk with the children that were so full of life and filled with hopes for the future at that stage. The Sandaime could see the Will of Fire burning strong in them, they would need but a purpose for it to bloom and fan out into magnificent flames.

The Kage then decided to visit his successor's heiress, Uzumaki Mito, in her home that was located in the more simpler part of the village. Hiruzen, as was his name, was sure that the young girl would need to see a friendly face to talk to after her botched attempt to pass the test yesterday for the third time.

Such a sad thought.

She was the child of two great ninjas and not an ounce of natural talent in her.

Unfortunately, the Kage's duties to the village were of larger concern than one child could ever be no matter who or what she is, and he could not take the time off his schedule to talk to her yesterday. But today, today was his time off!

He made his way towards Mito's apartment.

On his way there he quietly signaled for his ANBU escort to go and get some R&R time and to send another squad with him. The squad acknowledged the order with a special coded burst of chakra that only he and the other ANBU units could hope to pick up before they shunshined away to the ANBU headquarters in a flicker of leaves.

The Sandaime fire shadow made his way to the structure that was Mito's apartment building before walking up the stairs.

Once Sarutobi made it up the short flight of wooden stairs and creaking sounds, he grimly spotted the large number of graffiti lining the walls and the door to the young girl's apartment. While no-one dared to harm a hair on her after the last fool tried 9 years ago, they still went out of their way to alienate the girl. The Old Man could only sigh in sadness at seeing an innocent girl that should be seen as nothing less than a heroine live like this.

As Hiruzen looked at the wall he couldn't help but think on what his successor/predecessor, the Yondaime Hokage, would think of what the people that he had sacrificed and given his life up for were doing to Mito. Strutting up to the doors of the apartment, the Old Man knocked on the door to see if Mito was awake, "Mito-chan, can I come in?" he asked in his soothing but ragged tone of voice, a perfect picture of an aging leader.

"..." Silence greeted him.

He waited for a few moments only to get no response, at which he then knocked again, "Mito-chan? Are you awake?"

"..."

By now, the kage was getting increasingly worried since he had been waiting on the outside for more than 5 minutes.

He decided to go in order to check if Mito was alright, "I'm coming in Mito-chan!"

The elderly ninja entered the room with deliberate sound in his steps and was immediately greeted by the chaotic sight of clothes trashed and strewn around and over the various pieces of furniture, a picture that many people would not associate with the presence of a girl living under the roof.

It looked very... untidy. _'Dear Kami who did she get her housekeeping mannerism from? It wasn't from her mother and it sure as hell wasn't her father. Mito-sama would never have even heard of such a mess in her estate!'_ the Old Man couldn't help but wonder to himself as he looked around the rooms to see that Mito wasn't inside her apartment.

The man then went over to her bedroom and checked to see that Mito's bed was both unmade and looked unused since last time.

He was really starting to get worried by now.

He was already sensing the ANBU team approaching his position with brief and quick strides that undoubtedly left them a shade in the eyes of the villagers, just a brief flicker of black in the blue and white sky.

With a pair of furrowed eyebrows and hardened eyes the Sandaime Hokage walked out of the apartment to meet with his new ANBU squad that had just arrived, the four elites already bowing down before him, "Hokage-sama! Tora and her unit reporting!"

"ANBU... quickly, I want you to go and check every square inch of Konoha. Turn over buildings and shops if you need to, I don't care as you have the authority to do so. Find one Uzumaki Mito sooner than possible! Once you have located her, report back to my office with her double time, understood?" ordered the wrinkly man of 60 some years with a steely expression. He had been expecting to find Mito still asleep and a small gnat formed in his stomach.

The quartet of village black ops members nodded with a perfectly synchronized and crisp "Hai Hokage-sama!" response before vanishing in a flicker of shadows.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_General Hi no Kuni area... Konohagakure no Sato outer locale_

The current time of the year was known to the general populace of the Elemental Nations as the summer.

Y' know, the time of the year when the children are most active (and subsequently do the most mayhem to their older counterparts). It was the time of the year when some of the people's crops yielded the most produce in the Land of Fire, all depending on where you were in the country and what were you growing for your line of living. The summers occurring in of the Land of Fire were more than a little famous in the world for often times being very hospitable and pleasant to enjoy, attracting their fair share of tourists and visitors from around the four corners of the continent.

There was always enough rain to help the crops grow and there was always enough sun to lighten the months.

The air that the inhabitants of this country were blessed with was cool and soothing without being too moist. This was mostly due to the overabundance of natural tree and plant life that made the lands breathe, while the temperatures within this sea of endless greenery ranged from between being modest to sometimes being very hot, but still not as burning as was in the case of the Kaze no Kuni.

They were on the mild side of warm most of the time, not too cold, but just cold enough not to be considered too hot. It was quite enjoyable to be honest and it was one of the reasons some ninjas envied Konoha. Sure, while there were always those sort of ninjas that simply prided themselves on their villages far too much to even consider it, it was no secret to anyone in the world that the hidden ninja village of Konohagakure no Sato was located at a prime location for its economy and for its people's comfort out of all the ninja villages.

Their lands were fertile with the soil being extra rich giving them plentiful areas for harvest. The wildlife was generous and their economy was solid with the export of trees that were known across the world for their highest quality... and highest price on the market if they were directly grown by the Shodaime Hokage, as those ones tended to grow back when someone cut them down. The Yamanaka made first-class jewelry while the Nara's for instance made some of the world's best medicine.

While traveling through the landscape of never ending forests of the Hi no Kuni, a welcomed traveler could constantly hear the songs of the birds and their beautiful chirps following him through the day.

The small winged creatures of blue, brown, green and red colored feathers chirped away happily with their families up in their nests, located somewhere within the canopies of the humongous trees at a safe distance from some of the less witty predators that live in these forests. The grass would dance underneath your feet, swaying from side to side leisurely as the wind blows by gently.

However, for one Uzumaki Mito, none of this mattered since she had bigger concerns to worry herself about.

Concerns like, ' _Oh maaan... I need to find a place to stop and rest for a day... I'm sooo tired... and hungry and my body is all sore...-!_ ' the rather short girl for her age (she would make a point to show her dislike of people pointing this out with the generous use of her knuckles) whined mentally as she ran down one of the many dirt covered roads on her course of running away from Konoha.

Mito looked around herself as she ran, not taking too much interest in the flora and fauna of Hi no Kuni, since it was all the same like in the village.

Trees, trees and guess what?

Some more trees.

Boring!

' _Why is there no one on this road?'_

 _'I don't even know where I'm going!_ ' her thoughts were not enough to alarm her despite how troubling they appeared.

Mito didn't have much of a plan for her near future, but she knew what she wanted to do the most at the moment.

And at the moment the thing that the blonde wanted to do the most was to get as far away from that village as she possibly could. _'It's not like there's anyone that will miss me... perhaps Ayame nee-chan..-'_ she thought dejectedly. She ran and ran as her lithe and lightly developed feminine muscles were burning in protest only further increasing Mito's exhaustion.

And her stomach constantly grumbling at her hungrily didn't exactly help either!

Neither system of organs or cells was too happy about being forced to endure 10 or more long hours of running down the road without stopping even once for a breather, especially without food!

' _I'm so hungry!'_

Hungry and tired. She just wanted to sleep, but she didn't know how to survive in the forests on her own. She needed to reach some sort of a town first!

So yeah, such beautiful and interesting facts of nature and lands and all too pleasing attractions of the ninja nations didn't hold any more value to Mito than the brown colored dirt underneath her sandal clad feet at the moment.

Thinking about the Hidden Leaf Village, Mito found herself running as quickly as her stamina would allow her to get away from the village that she had grown up in all alone, without any love or family.

It was so not fair! Why couldn't she get a loving family like everybody else!

After about fifteen more minutes of running through the stings in her muscles (give or take a few, she wasn't really focused on keeping the time), the golden haired girl finally felt like there was a single lucky star shining down upon on her after all the trouble she had been through that night.

It must have been taking pity on her, ' _I see a town! I see a town! Hot chow and a warm bed, here I come!'_ Mito couldn't help but think to herself with a measure of glee, subconsciously increasing her speed as much as she could with the use of chakra... it was an instinctual move on her part and she didn't even know that it could be done, but chakra still obeyed the owner on instincts at the time.

She slowed down as she reached the place, taking a moment to collect her breath. Some of the people in the town glanced at her from the corner of their eyes but otherwise they kept to themselves and didn't comment. It was nothing new to see a kid come from the direction of the ninja village all shaken up, those guys had some pretty high standards.

The midget quickly made her way past the various townsfolk of the town.

She didn't even bother to look around the area that she was in or to take in the sights. Despite this being her very first time outside of the village walls, the place wasn't anything impressive to see for someone who had been born and lived inside the Hidden Leaf Village her entire life, and her hunger took priority over her inquisitive nature any day of the week.

And as her mind finally reached a consensus with her stomach, the slightly disheveled looking form of Mito entered the very first building that she could smell food from. To add to her tired state, Mito's soft baby blue eyes were bloodshot from crying nearly all night... nothing a little henge couldn't fix (the only jutsu that she had actually learned and perfected), but her tears had by then all dried up.

Mito had always had an enhanced sense of smell, sight and hearing.

Of course she thought this was all normal, since nobody ever bothered to tell her otherwise.

The young girl steeled her nerves as much as she could and walked in, hearing a soft chime of bells that she could not have tripped since there were no doors to begin with. But this quickly flew to the back of her mind as she fought back the need to drool. Maybe it wasn't the smartest of ideas in Mito's history to leave the village and only take food that needs at least 3 minutes of boiling to become edible.

Without even checking the atmosphere of the place that she had entered to see if it was safe or even appropriate for her, the whisker cheeked girl quickly walked up to the barkeep with a tired yet still perky gait, refusing to give in and become a downer.

The barkeep seemed to be an old man in his 50's with a head of bald, shiny skin and a chummy tummy. There was a scar running down the left side of his cheek and his hands were otherwise busy on a rather large glass with a rag.

An amused smile appeared on the barkeep's face when he saw our favorite female blonde approach him with the same sort of attitude his daughter would at her age.

"Yes? Can I help ya' lil' Missy? You want somethin'?" the bald barkeep asked Mito with an accent that the blonde had never heard before... it was scratchy. She was momentarily startled by the gruff… yet generally kind tone of voice that the man was using to talk to her.

She used every bit of her ninja training that she could to answer, putting on a tired smile, "Ummm, Yeah Ossan! Can I get several servings of Miso Ramen with extra pork please... and is there a place close where I could rent a room at?" she asked as she had a little bit of money in her wallet that she could spend here.

The barkeep hearing that raised an eyebrow as he put down the large glass and gestured around the place with his rug free hand, "Look 'round ya' sweetie! Do ya' honestly think that this fine establishment looks like a place where you can find them wet noodles in?" his voice sounded terribly amused as he looked at her, shaking his head at the kid before picking up another glass to dry.

At his prompting words the kunoichi failure indiscreetly looked around the place she had entered, seeing several ruffians and traveling swordsmen drinking in one corner, some older men laughing drunkenly in the approximate center of the room and a very large white coated tiger staring right at her from the other side of the room.

The waist tall animal was lying close to a red haired man who had his back turned against her. There was a short sheathed sword leaning on the side of the table indicating that he might just be another sword for hire or something along those lines.

Turning back around to look up at the barkeep that had a strange glint in his eyes, Mito chuckled a bit nervously, scratching the back of her head sheepishly. Can you really blame her?

"Well...I guess not?" was her unsagely response.

The chubby barkeep just chuckled at her before leaning over the corner to ruffle her hair, causing the girl to glare cutely at him.

He chuckled a little more on seeing her expression before speaking, "Tell ya what. I'll just give ya' some bread and milk, how 'bout it Missy?"

"Uh... Okay... I guess that would work too..." It wouldn't do much to satisfy her hunger but it was better than nothing.

Though she would really prefer ramen...

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_An adoring little pair of generic black eyes watched with nothing but pure adoration and childish love shining in them as a tall, slim and a beautiful woman with the prettiest of hair colors ever imaginable by him moved around the kitchen with the grace of an expert, using the kitchen utensils as easily in the kitchen as a swordsman would use a blade on the field of battle._

_The woman in charge of making chow for the Uzumaki family was softly humming to herself while chattering away with her little baby boy who nodded with his head constantly at anything she said, born and raised as a true mamma's boy. The mature beauty took a giggling delight in how easy it was to make her little boy smile and laugh with her._

_And to think he had just started to go to the Academy._

_The boy's little nose sniffed, its pseu-jin... pso-jinchi... ugh... its spedo-janchucjiki's! YES, his spedo-janchucjiki's heightened senses very appreciative at the delightful aroma of food, meat and freshly baked bread and all other sorts of delights wafting throughout the house._

_His mother was the best cook._

_The boy knew that when he grew up, he wanted to become as good at cooking as his mother dearest and most awesome!_

_"Naru-chan!" Big blue eyes of doe gazed down at him as the beautiful young mother leaned down with her hands resting on her knees._

_There was a huge, absolutely grinning and utterly beaming grin right across her face, and her deep blue eyes sparked as she looked at him. "Mummy's almost finished with dinner. Can you put out the chopsticks for us and Daddy?" Grinning with delight and completely thrilled to be able to help with the meal, little Naru-chan leapt up from the table that he was wiggling on and pulled out a stool to stand on so that he could reach the utensils drawer._

_A little head of red made it above the table level and soon enough, small digits grabbed several pairs of chopsticks before turning around to set them on to the table. There were two big pairs for his Mommy and his... Dad, one tiny pair of the wooden utensils for him and another tiny pair for his Mommy and his baby sister that was still being cooked!_

_Now that the table was all set for dinner, save for one missing person, little Naru-chan couldn't help but go back to talking and laughing with his mother. His black eyes were a rather startling contrast to her blue ones, but Naru-chan didn't care. He had his Mommy's hair and that was awesome!_

_But Dad wasn't home yet._

_Uzumaki Kushina giggled at another little joke between herself and her little boy as she looked up at the clock, at the same time taking off her apron and letting her long crimson hair flow down her back. The woman sighed annoyedly, reaching for a frying pan with her hand before turning around to wash it in the sink._

_"Otou-san's late... again!" she pronounced irritatingly as her little Naru-chan tugged on his mother's dress, trying to get her attention. Well little Naru-chan wasn't really that little anymore, he was 8 years old now but his mother was very smothering and mother henny over him, not that he minded._

_He was a true Momma's boy in every sense of the world._

_Naru-chan giggled at the scowling expression on his Kaa-chan's pretty face._

_Otou-san was going to get an earful when he comes home._

_Naru-chan watched in silent delight as his mother paused to look down at him._

_He beamed up at her like the innocent little kid that he was and tapped his hands against her belly, and she smiled at him lovingly. She took his hands into her own long, slender arms and rested them on her belly, filled with a beautiful swollen promise within it._

_Young Naru-chan had been following his mother's belly for some time now, carefully watching and meticulously following its progress every day. Observing as it grew larger and larger with his little baby sister! Having been worried sick for his mommy and baby sister like a normal civilian child his age would be, Naru-chan had been scampering off into his parents' room every night with a mug full of warm milk for his loving Kaa-chan._

_Little Naru-chan would take care of his Kaa-chan whenever Tou-san wasn't home to help and even then he always did his best to make her day to day life as happy and comfortable as his little, innocent mind could plan. Every night, Naru-chan would take the pile of folded clothes and determinedly stagger with it by himself, off to place it in their respective places, even struggling up the stairs sometimes. He wasn't being trained hard like a shinobi his age would in the times of war, he wasn't like some of those prodigies that keep popping up every few years and are instantly crowned the next coming of the Shodaime Hokage._

_His Kaa-chan would have thrown a fit worthy of a tailed beast if he had been forced into the cruel shinobi world any younger than absolutely necessary._

_And every night, before he was told to go back to his bed and sleep, the beautiful young mother would take her little Naru-chan in her arms and ask him to press his little head of red against the soft bulge of flesh and warmth, and to ask the little angel cooking within what it was doing …_

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_Machitai... 42 miles out of Konoha_

Naru-chan... blinked out of the strange flashback to his happier days back in Konoha as he refocused back onto his work before him.

' _Wonder what triggered that one. I thought that the doctor said that my dreams will stop pestering me when I relax..._ ' the 'only' surviving member of the once proud and strong Uzumaki Clan (that he was aware of) wondered while his steady hand moved in artistic motions across a large sheet of paper laid out on the table in front of him, the fine hairs of the brush carrying black ink coated with his chakra and blood along with it crating intricate patterns of seals and sealing arrays.

He heard the familiar growl of his partner, only sparing the cat a single quick glance before returning back to his little 'hobby'.

"Hm? What is it, Kisa?" he asked his partner and familiar, Kisa the White Fang Tigress. Naruto was sitting in one of the corners of the bar. The place was filled with sellswords. He had the absolute confidence in the fact that even with his back turned to everyone else there, that there was nothing for him to fear for.

"Trouble... Pest problems.." the feline hunter cat observed as she flicked her long tail in annoyance, her golden cat eyes burning with irritation and imminent anger at the fools about to encroach upon their tolerance circle.

Neither one of them liked to deal with fools and humans were the biggest fools in the world.

Her master and partner simply sighed hearing that.

"And here I thought I would be able to finish this seal before any simple mongrel interrupted us."

He put down the brush just as a commotion started...

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_Machitai... 42 miles out of Konoha_

Uzumaki Mito stood in the middle of a town tavern in what looked like a slouch.

Unlike what she had been hoping for till yesterday, there was no shiny plate of a metal Konoha Hitae-ate situated on her forehead and no amount of real ninja pride in her.

The girl's blue eyes darkened in sadness as she thought about her former village and her Ayame nee-chan, but she steeled herself. She had to leave that life behind her. Her small pink lips were pulled down into a frown as she looked over her shoulder, eyes narrowing in thought.

Her current state of mind however, wasn't really connected with sadness at all.

' _Come on, where's ossan with the food? What's taking him so loooong anyway?'_ she wondered hungrily as she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before sighing audibly. Mito started to squirm restlessly on the spot. Her frustration at the lack of grub in her stomach was starting to make itself known even stronger.

She was fidgeting to move and to do ...something.

Just like any Uzumaki, Mito didn't like waiting around for things to happen even if it was a very short wait in comparison to what ninjas experience daily.

It just wasn't in her nature to be still on one spot and wait for others. Heck, she could barely wait for the three minutes that it took her bellowed ramen to cook without jumping out of her skin.

The wait was menacingly boring for her and to top it off, she was hungry and sleepy, her stomach demanded that she be feed and she was sure that she will be turning snarky soon!

The time slowly, oh so slowly, ticked away in perfect synchrony to that damnable old clock hanging up above the counter like a hunting trophy, irritably clicking away with the music of seconds and minutes.

Mito glared up at the clock.

Tick

Tok

Tick

Tok

Twitch

Tok

Tick

Twitch

Twitch

Tok

Mito humphed and looked away upon realizing that she wasn't about to make the time speed up just by glaring at the clock.

She looked towards the adults in this place and made a confused face as she watched them. The sound of uproarious and drunken laughter _this_ early in the morning was not something that the young Uzumaki could really come to terms with, but the blonde youth was young and that would change with the passage of time in the future as she grew older and more mature.

Another minute passed away with nothing for her to do.

Whats to say... well, she was simply staring at the wall on the far side of the room as she huffed to herself angrily before folding her arms across her chest and turning her head about to direct her glaring daggers gaze at the clock above her again.

 _'Ramen would have been done far sooner! What's the old guy playing at?'_ the little blonde haired girl wondered as she brought her left hand up in order to play with tresses of her short, golden hair. Mito was known to be a little of a tomboy in the village. Her hair was cut short at her neck, but she still liked to play with it sometimes just like any other girl in her class did.

Being an orphan without any sort of a mother figure in her life, Mito would often imagine herself doing similar things with her mother that she heard other girls do and she often wondered just how did her Kaa-chan look... but she didn't let her dreams wander off like that.

Too much.

The whiskered youth started to tap her foot on the ground before she frowned a little more.

"Ossan, would you hurry it up!" Mito yelled towards the back room of the bar once her patience finally ran dry.

"Hold ya' shorties ya' little twerp. I'ma coming with th'a food! I gotta find the damn milk first!"

"Well I'm still waiting out here!"

With that said, Mito turned her head away from the bar and looked around the place that she was it again.

It looked just like any old tavern that she had seen back in the Hidden Leaf Village, only the company in here looked a little more rougher than what she was used to back in Konoha.

The reclusive peace of the small town tavern was abruptly broken then as several people dressed in matching puke colored beige trench coats barged into the place with dangerous looks in their eyes... just as the barkeep came back with her meal. The leader of the puke thug group was a tall man with a bald head without any hair on it and a very nasty scorch mark located on his chin, sticking out in the picture like a case of bad hair.

The leader had round yellow eyes with black pupils and brown hair on the sides by his ears, giving him a weird animal look.

He walked into the town tavern with a threatening swing of his long sword while barking out threats like he was the man of the day, "Alright ya' miserable coots! Everyone settle down right now and you will be keepin' all of your limbs! Now, barkeep! Hand over all your money and your booze and we won't do you any permanent harm!" he grinned at them all sickly and as soon as he finished saying that, a grand total of 6 thugs lined up behind him in an organized rush.

All of them were wearing the same repulsing trench coats and all of them were ugly as fuck. No whore would ever think of laying down in bed with them no matter how desperate for money she was. They were so ugly that their mothers must have been blind to love them.

The leader of the thugs added several more threats for good measure with a sinister chuckle escaping his lips, working hard on his bad guy image as he rested his long sword on his shoulder, the metal of the blade gleaming silver in the morning sun that was just peering in through the entrance to the tavern.

However, despite of the apparent lack of initial responses to his words - words which must have shocked more than a few of them with their bravado - most of the patrons there that could still think straight didn't seem to like the sound of that at all.

They weren't about to let some upstart idiots just come in there and demand stuff out of the establishment! What was this, the Clan Wars Era? Standing back near the bar with a frown on her face, Mito quietly reached for a kunai from her pouch with her left hand, holding it up in a reverse grip.

But otherwise, she kept still as she watched the adults get up. She could tell that this was going to turn messy, even she wasn't that dumb.

"Would ya' listen to this one boys!" One man wearing some sort of a light metal armor, who was approximately in his late 30's, stated aggressively as he laughed away with his table buddies drunkenly.

That man plus several other of the mercenary sell swords in the room suddenly rose up from their tables, their hands slowly reaching towards their weapons as they looked over the uniformed idiots, "Who do you think you are punks?"

The leader of the thugs didn't comment on the question, his face didn't even twitch.

The patron looked around the place with a smirk on his face before grinning at the thug group dangerously, seeing all of the support that he was getting with his intent, "I think we should teach you ugly fucks a lesson in good manners, am I right?!" The man asked the rest of the booze customers in the place as numerous sounds of swords unsheathing in rough unison filled the room.

"Yeah!"

"Let's show em!"

"Kill the ugly fucks!"

Despite the fact that they were facing a large mercenary group armed to the teeth with sharp instruments of death, the thugs didn't really seem to bothered by them at all, again despite the fact that they were outnumbered nearly 3 : 1, odds that weren't too bright in any situation.

The answer to the patrons' challenge of combat came when the thug on the immediate right of the leader, the big fat one who looked like a cross between a human and an oversized pig, pulled out a kunai from somewhere within his trench coat while a pair of Bunshins (Clones) materialized beside him with a show of spectral shadows.

Seeing the clones appear beside the fatso in a manner that only a shinobi could pull off, most of the sell swords in the tavern immediately backed down from the fight with sour looks etched on their faces as they glared at the thugs... now acknowledged as bandits.

They were a brave lot, there was no question about that, but they weren't about to go and fight against damn ninjas. Most of them have been in their line of business long enough to see just how dangerous those freaks are in a fight.

The bandit leader grinned at the lot ugly seeing them all cower and back down at the sight of a simple Bunshin no Jutsu, worms that they are, "Yeah? I thought so! All ya are nothing but big airheads. Cowards the lot of ya! Can't face a ninja on his worst day." he cackled while playing around with a kunai in his hand as he turned his head around towards his employees.

All of them wore similar expressions on their faces, sick grins that rattled the soul.

"Move in boys, I want all the booze that the old man has sealed into the scrolls. You know that the boss will want some refreshment after he has his share of cum buckets, then we will have our own fun with the whores!" he barked out orders to the group of shinobi rejects and all of the bandits laughed uproariously with him as they started to advance upon barkeep's counter, grins plastered across all of their ugly mugs.

This wasn't their first robbery of the day.

Sure all of this looked like the stuff that greenhorn bandits started with, but the facts was that they simply didn't have the numbers required to successfully pillage this town, so a robbery it is.

"Look at this one, somebody wants to go and play hero...!" One of the bandits mocked.

Most of them laughed at his words while some of them were openly snarling at a young girl that stood before them with only a kunai held in her in hands. The brat's eyes were set in a fierce glare aimed at them despite the fact that the girl was shaking like a little rabbit, most likely never having faced with the challenge of real life combat.

"Move out of our way girl ...or we will hurt you.." one of the ugly ninja thugs (for the sake of future characterization in this chapter, let's just call him the Ugly Thug #3) said with a deep sneer on his face before he took out a kunai of his own from his coat, waving it around in the air like he was going to poke the little girl with it.

He wasn't alone though.

"No, no, no! Stay there, stay there! HIHIHI! I'm betting that you will be really tight if we take you. He-He! I haven't had a woman as young as you in some time... hehehe.." Another one of the repulsive thugs (Ugly Thug #4) commented as he grinned at Mito with a lecherous smirk spreading across his face, leaving no doubts as to what he was planning to do with her.

He was already imagining the screams of the girl in his mind, forcing her to cry out as he and the rest of the boys raped the young woman, slowly and thoroughly turning her into their little sex slave who would obediently take all of their cocks into her with a smile on her face.

"..No! I won't let you rob Ossan like this! D-Don't come any closer!" She wasn't even registering the meaning behind the Ugly Thug #4's words as she tried to calm herself down. Mito's declaration was spoken with all the courage that the young girl could muster at the moment, which wasn't all that much considering, but it was still damn impressive for a kid her age freshly out of the Academy (which she had failed).

The blonde haired youth slid into the basic Academy Taijutsu stance (AKA The Cookie Cutter) that had been taught to her by the Academy Teachers, her kunai held up in front of her defensively.

The lot of the tavern patrons all looked at the girl, feeling thoroughly ashamed that she was upstaging them in terms of bravery by standing up to the bandits. Alas, none of them were looking out for an early grave via becoming ninjas' victims, so they would keep out of this.

Ninjas were freaks of nature!

"*sigh... Very well. Your choice girlie!" The Ugly Thug #3 sighed out as he shook his head in disappointment. A brief flicker of sadness even crossed his face while the other one, the one who just day dreamed about using her lithe body for his pleasure, grinned. That one suddenly rushed at Mito with mildly impressive speeds for a non-village affiliated ninja, crossing the distance between them faster then an arrow could fly, "Come here, I'll make you see stars little one He-Hehe!" the man's eyes shone with a particular shine of madness that should have gotten him killed long ago, "You'l be-" but he didn't get to say anything more than that.

Why?

Well, maybe because that particular bandit ended up being as dead as the dead can be down on the tavern's wooden floor, his blood pooling all around him before he could even make it two steps closer to Mito, when a kunai suddenly lodged itself deep into the back of his neck, silencing him forever.

"What the!? Someone got Frau!"

"Who did that?!"

It was a clean, silent and an instant kill, the shinobi tool of trade having pierced the Ugly Thug #4's spine and cut away at his oxygen supply before he could even react to the pain, ridding this world of one more rat that scurried about in its darkness. The rest of the ninja washouts collectively paused in their steps seeing one of their own drop dead like that, before they started glaring and glaring at all of the people present in the tavern, looking for the one who they would kill for that.

' _I didn't even see the Kunai! That was FAST!'_ Mito thought frantically as her shaking intensified. She was starring at the corpse, mortification spreading over her face as her pupils dilated.

The barkeep took her hand and guided her behind the counter, the girl offering zero resistance. "Stay down 'ere lil' one. Let real ninjas handle this..." he whispered lowly.

It was then that all of them heard the words of someone, someone who's voice sounded cold and brutally confidant, belittling them like they were worth absolutely nothing, less then the dirt on the floor, "Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. What lowly insects think that they can act all tough..."

"Where is he?"

"What, can't follow the sounds?"

"He's throwing off his voice, search for his chakra!"

"Such _miserable_ excuses for Shinobi shouldn't even draw breath in this world!"

"Find the bastard!" the bandits started to move all around the tavern.

"Be careful or I might just kill you for those words!" the voice sneered at them distastefully, its tone laced with killer intent that made most of them question their line of work, as if they would have a future after this.

"Get out of here before my patience draws to an end and I send you to the Shinigami's embrace!" the voice then snorted, before continuing with its speech, "I shouldn't even be bothering with you weaklings, but you just pissed me off, so I guess I'll just have to squash you all like the pathetic bugs that you are..." it trailed off as one of the bandits exploded in a shower of blood and gore.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~  
**

**Play :** **[nightstep] Alone**

_General Hi no Kuni... 50 miles out of Konoha_

The brightly shining golden sun was... shining brightly down upon the world of ninjas and shinobi? Huh, go figure, like that wasn't a given already. While the mid-day time sun of the late Hi no Kuni summer did its most important job in recorded history (which was to float up there in the blue tinted sky and continue to be shiny), a certain young man with a head of short and spiky crimson hair, wearing black cargo pants and a rust red colored track-coat along with a pair of simple blue colored ninja sandals, could be found somewhere within the forested territory of both the militarily powerful and economically extremely rich Land of Fire, staring blankly at the road ahead of him as he nibbled on a toothpick in his mouth.

The young man was walking down the middle of a quaint little road some distance from Konoha at a sedate pace having finished his little task. He patted the pouch on his hip with a small smirk on his face, Uzumaki sealing techniques made short work of most security systems.

His familiar was trailing right beside him with her head held high in the air almost regally.

Not too far on the road behind them there was an exhausted girl. Her blue eyes were narrowed on the road in front of her despite her tiredness as she trudged on stubbornly through the need for rest, moving forward in a slow run as she tried to catch up to the red haired man. She was breathing raggedly as she tried to run on literally fumes alone, chasing after the guy with the tiger.

She wanted something out of him and she was going to get it!

The young girl was wearing track suit orange pants and a white Tee that had a red colored spiral pattern on the back of it along with a single ninja pouch placed on her hip. An orange jacket that was unbuttoned all the way was tied around her waist. The beige colored piece of uniform wear could be used to carry anything from dangerous and pointy ninja tools to lady perfume... She also wore a pair of blue colored ninja sandals on her feet.

The ninja sandals were simple and effective footwear that allowed ninjas a wide range of movement without any issues with traction, and they were wide-spread throughout the world.

"Naruto?" a questioning growl came from the tigresses, her voice sounding exactly like an animal should sound to the normal ear.

Well Naruto certainly didn't have a normal pair of ears... figuratively speaking of course.

"Hmm... Nah, don't bother with it Kisa-chan, we'll see eventually if they want something from us or not..." the young man with three pairs of whisker marks on his cheeks shook his head as he responded to the question. His voice was down straight casual showing his partner once again that he didn't care about the situation that they were in in the slightest.

He didn't care about _it_ any more then he did for the dust on his clothing, and that only required a weak pulse of chakra to get rid was just how he was... unless provoked or agitated of course. Then he was a cruel monster, a downright terrifying force of nature.

Kisa looked up towards the sky, craning her head backwards, "..very well." the white furred tigress responded after a moment of thought.

"Just remember, this is Hi no Kuni, things like that do happen fairly often.."

"Yes, I know..."

"Buuuut?"

" _But,_ it doesn't make me think about it any less... its annoying me.."

Naruto silently chuckled at his familiar's words before letting a simple silence envelop them on their trip, just how he liked it. Traveling was one of the things he did a lot. He was always moving around, never once staying put in one area for too long.

Well there was one place where he did often stay for a long time...

"I hate it when you do that you know..." the predator cat muttered to herself as she sniffed the air, taking in the various scents around them with her considerably more powerful sense of smell. While Naruto's pseudo-jinchuriki sense of smell was vastly superior to other humans like with all of his other senses, hers was just so much better than his own that it wasn't even worth contending with.

"Yare Yare... What's the problem Kisa, can't take the quiet?"

"You know perfectly well what my problem is _Naru-chan..._ " the tigress growled out.

The red haired shinobi nearly choked and swallowed the toothpick down his throat hearing his old nickname come from the feline's mouth as if it was a taunting haunt from ghosts long buried and forgotten. Naruto quickly turned his head around to glare at the mighty predator cat of the wilds with a pair of red eyes. She simply looked back at him with that _look_ she always gave him ever since they had meet... so similar to Kaa-chan's that it hurt him to see it.

He looked away from her after a moment of staring with a ticked off expression on his face.

His face turned sour.

"Tch! Don't call me that! You know I don't like remembering the past!"

Kisa simply shook her head in annoyance hearing his heated answer .

Her tail swished behind her in agitation.

Part of it was directed at Naruto for being such a difficult person to deal with at times and a part of it was directed at herself for taunting him like that ..despite her good intentions. She knew just how much he hated his past. He never talked about his life before she had found him, and she was well aware of just how much being this close to the Hidden Leaf Village made his blood boil in anger and hatred. They had barely finished the job when his temper went off, nearly alerting half of the Home Guard. His chakra could get really, really dark when he was angered and acted like a beacon of coldness and hatred.

"You are such a stubborn child Naruto-kun..."

"Better to be stubborn then...- ah never mind!" Naruto finished his sentence with a clip on the end, closing his mouth with a click of his teeth as he blew out hot air through his nostrils, cooling down his temper.

"Sometimes I just don't understand you Naruto."

"Yeah well, good for you then..." Naruto replied with a twitch of his eye as his hand reached out to pet Kisa's fur on instinct. Having been a legitimate summoner of the tigers for a long time now, there were certain traits to him that were unique. Amongst them was the knowledge on how to understand their language.

He understood Kisa's kin perfectly. He could easily communicate with any tiger, be it a wild creature or a summon.

Several minutes passed by in silence between the two of them before both the ninja and the tiger summon picked up on the sound of someone running towards them, finally catching up to the duo after an extended period of time when they were just an annoying blip on their senses.

Both the red head and the white tiger had long since sensed someone following behind him.

"Naruto..."

"Don't, if you do I won't care though..."

The tigress released a sigh, a funny picture considering who did it, she was a tiger.. tigers don't sigh, ever.

They were being followed, that much was long since obvious, but she should have known the red head would act like that.

Naruto didn't particularly care enough about the things that went in the world around him to act on it though.

If they wanted to fight him he would fight them and kill them after defeating them.

If they wanted something else from him he would ignore them.

Well that was the plan at least... until that certain someone called him by a nickname that both himself and his mother shared in their youth.

''Hey Tomato, wait up! I want you to train me!''

**~~ CHAPTER END ~~**

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	2. Missing Jin!

**Improved and redone!**

* * *

**" _You are going to feel a lot of pain and suffering…but it will make you stronger…"_**

**Bloody Waves**

**Volume 1 –** _Uzumaki; Hai ka Īe !?_

 **Chapter 2 –** Missing Jin!

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

**Play:** _Singularity - Alone (Au5 & Fractal Remix)_

_General Hi no Kuni... 50 miles out of Konoha_

"Hey Tomato, wait up! I want you to train me!" Naruto heard someone shout at him from behind his back and the entire world paused for him, coming to a halt.

The words that the offending voice used made the red head stop walking and stand upright in the middle of the road, a blank look on his face as he stared ahead. The wind started whooshing around him and his tigress loudly, the shifting air currents spraying an assortment of leaves all over the scene and tickling Naruto's crimson locks of hair from side to side.

Shadows fell over Naruto's eyes and the muscles around his jaw twitched...

Noo _ooo_ , of course that this wasn't a dramatic pause...

Kisa marked the owner of the voice as a brainless idiot in her books right then and there. She of all (people?) knew that annoying Naruto was not something that could be considered good for one's health. In fact, while Naruto had murdered strong people for less in the past, annoying him was a surefire way of digging up your own grave prematurely. As the words got processed through the village-less nin's brain, the man was already prepared to run his fingers through a series of few short hand seals and burn the offender to cinder crisp ash with a well placed Katon ninjutsu.

' _Tomato? Someone... someone dares!_ ' the red head seethed internally as he concentrated on the voice of the offender.

There was a certain level of squeakiness in it that normally faded with age. Such a trait told him it was a young kid that was annoying him.

Great, just great.

He didn't make it a habit of killing children.

"Mister, mister, did you hear me?!"

"Hellooo! Can you say something!?"

Though he could make an exception...

"Hey! I'm talking to you, hellooO! Are you there?"

"Mou~~ stop ignoring me!"

The fool was standing at exactly five feet and three inches away from himself and Kisa, at 7 o'clock and 34 minutes by degree measure if 12 was facing his front.

She clearly had a death wish if she was using that _nickname_.

"Anooo.. what is it mistah? Did you and Tora-chan fall asleep?"

"How can you fall asleep while standing, is it one of your cool ninja tricks? Will you teach me? Oooh I know, it must be a..."

"...So? So? So? Say something mister..."

"...can you do that please? I want to be cool as you..."

The onslaught of questions (ones that he had zero plans on answering) continued to fly out of the girl's mouth seemingly without an end to them. The red head's left eye suddenly sprouted a big (and bolded for added measure!), bright red tick mark over it as his peaceful silence was shattered. The kid was talking really, really fast.

But Naruto was as good as a statue in offering a reply.

Still, it would seem that the fool was doing her very best to try and chat his ears off (Why hasn't Kisa wrung her neck by now?!).

"Tora-chan? Why isn't Tomato-san saying anything?" the girl inquired of his familiar summon.

Small swifts of smoke wafted off the toothpick as if it was a freshly baked pie when Naruto started twitching. It had been barely 12 seconds since the first sentence had reached his ears and he must have heard the word Tomato over a dozen of times by now.

Black and smelly, crumpling char slowly started to form at the end of the toothpick.

The little piece of wood was quickly lit on fire from the sheer intensity of Naruto's chakra spiking at the impious approach of the young fool! Naruto spit away the toothpick, starling the girl at the sudden action. She stared at the little piece of wood and admired as it burned to ash.

Beside him, Naruto could feel that Kisa was chuckling at him, despite not doing anything to show it on the outside. The tigress looked at the young girl standing behind them with an amused glint in her golden eyes. The girl was a fool, but this type of fools she could endure and get a kick of amusement from in the process. She just needed to wait for the keg to blow!

Maybe she should add a little incentive...

"Well _Tomato?_ Won't you answer this little girl's questions?" The tigress growled out at the red head teasingly while pushing her nose up against Naruto's fists, trying to elicit a response from the fuinjutsu user.

"Girl, you might want to run now, Tomato-kun doesn't like that nickname..." she thought out loud absent mindedly, taunting her partner. Naturally, the stranger didn't understand the tigress's words in the slightest, being unable to recognize the differences in growls. She was doing this only to rile Naruto up.

And it was working...

The red haired shinobi _slowly_ , almost creepily, started to turn his head around so that he could look over his shoulder. He remained rooted in his spot, and he had every intention to direct a _very_ cold glare at the fool who dared to call him _that._ And his glares have killed people before, believe it or not!

"Shut up brat!"

Mito flinched.

"Is there a reason for you to annoy me. Because if there is, it better be a good one." Naruto started to say angrily as his temper finally boiled over. His black orbs darkened in anger while they narrowed to the point that the man looked more like a predator than a ninja, few traits of his summons that he would get when his emotions took over.

But when he got a better look at the girl, he froze like a statue.

The thoughts of ' _Huh?! What the...? That can't be right...'_ and ' _Is she that kid?'_ slowly crawled through his head like a snail making his way over a leaf.

Despite the fact that Naruto's brain processed things much faster then what normal humans had the capacity for, he was at a loss at what to do for a few moments, because the image that the red head saw when he turned around was not something that he was prepared for or expecting.

"Huh? Oh, I think you are going to train me to be a strong ninja like you Tomato-san?"

"Uhh..." Naruto blinked.

"Do you wanna be my friend?"

The girl asked him in a clueless tone of voice, believing it all to be a good natured joke.

Naruto's mouth hung open and closed several times in a row as he searched for the right words to answer with.

This was quite a conundrum that the fates have thrown at him.

The young girl briefly titled her head ever so slightly to the side in confusion, staring up at the red haired man with a pair of blue eyes that shined with curiosity in them.

"What, is there something on my face?" he finally found his voice noting her look as he quickly made notes of her appearance.

The little girl was a young thing, short and barely 11 years looking and lacking many of the traits he saw in other kunoichis-training-to-be. He briefly spied on the kunai peeking in through her pouch before looking back towards her face. Her eyes were sparkling blues and she had very familiar markings on her cheeks. The girl also had her hair cut short and colored a startling sun-kissed gold.

"You! You have the same birthmarks like I do Tomato-san! How did you get them?" the blonde haired girl said in what could only be called a loud shout of surprise as she took some sort of a funny pose and pointed a finger straight up at his face in realization.

"Hn?" he grunted shortly, trying to save his face. He hated spacing out like that...

Three separate sets of eyes, one of them black with apathy and coldness, one gold with attitude and carriage and the last one blue with a lot of spunk in them, blinked together in a surprisingly coordinated unison, before the blonde haired girl oddly started grinning up at Naruto like a loon.

"I didn't even notice before, they look really nice on you!"

Naruto grunted again at the unneeded praise from the girl.

He didn't care for how people though he looked.

Kisa purred lightly beside him hearing that come from the girl, before she sauntered up closer to the blonde.

She just loved how dangerous and wild her young partner could look when angered with such facial traits on him. Of course, she wouldn't let his anger control him, that would surely prove to be a disaster.

"Hey, do you think we are related? Maybe we are family huh? That would be soo cool! Right?" the young girl looked up at him and asked, with hope practically dripping from her voice. It was very, and I do mean VERY unrealistic and foolish, nigh useless for young Mito to believe that she would suddenly come across a long lost cousin or something along the lines of family just as she had left the village that hated her since practically day one.

But in the eyes of an orphan, it was a chance always worth hoping for.

Alas, there were certain circumstances of the past that had that hope denied outright without any mercy for the plea of the young Uzumaki female. Naruto slowly blinked at her, flicking his black eyes across the picture of the familiar grin that was plastered across her face, before mentally shaking his head to get it back straight on the platou of existence that they were in and composing himself, cursing his momentary show of weakness at the surprise question and that look.

It was preposterous for her to ask that, he didn't even think that there were _any_ Uzumaki left in the world besides himself, not after that man killed her! There certainly weren't any in the Hidden Leaf Village.

His answer reflected this opinion, "No... brat."

The girl's grin fell from her face. The red head replied to her question simply and coldly, with a flat tone of voice that lacked any semblance of sympathy or empathy for other living beings, bursting the girl's bubble of hope in an instant with a mind numbing 'pop!'. Naruto didn't bother himself to care about that though (he could read her emotions easily enough). He wasn't a nice guy by nature nor would he suddenly turn from his normal freelancing into a retail babysitter for little brats that probably didn't even know how to throw a kunai straight.

"What?.. A-are you.. are you sure? Don't we l-like, look alike ...a little?" Mito asked the man meekly as she prayed to herself ' _Please don't be, please don't be!_ '.

She was doing her best to hold back a tear at his cold rebuttal, she was a very emotional girl by nature.

The red head's disinterested, coal and cold eyes stared impassively at the face of the young girl who by all means really did look a lot like his Kaa-chan. To make things clear, Naruto had seen a _lot_ of pictures of his mother back when she was still a kid, most of them were taken while she was still living in Uzushiogakure no Sato, but there were other pictures that came with age of course, pictures taken within that despicable village, pictures taken with _that man_... pictures taken with him.

Having a sort of photographic memory allowed the red head to remember almost everything he saw with picture perfect clarity and because of that little trait, a little part of him couldn't help itself but to try and compare the faces of the two in some fit of spontaneous hope.

That small part of him also noted back, albeit more than a little meekly as it was drowned out by the man's cold side, that there were many similarities between the two girls. Despite the evidence processed by his brain, Naruto stashed that stray line of thought to the back of his mind.

"Yes I'm sure."

"B-B-bu-!" she tried to protest.

Naruto sent her a bone-chilling glare, shutting her up in an instant.

Mito reverted her gaze from his face.

He nodded thoughtfully at her silence, very pleased at it actually, "Good, silence is good. Go, shoo. Don't try bothering me anymore."

She looked back at him, her hair whipping fort. She opened her mouth to speak.

"H-H-Hey now mister, why n-not just."

He cut her off without bothering to listen to her words, "Let me make myself clear brat. I'll kill you if you don't stop annoying me." the red haired shinobi threatened darkly, anger passing through his cold eyes like a raging fire, before he glanced a look directed at Kisa, who was currently standing beside the girl, looking over her with a critical eye, deadly intelligence gleaming in her golden eyes.

"W-w-wha'?" the girl spluttered back in shock as she took an instinctual step back from a simple burst of Naruto's Killing Intent directed at her when their eyes crossed paths.

She cowered under the pressure easily enough, looks like he would get to enjoy his peaceful silence again. He kept the pressure low though... no need to alarm the ninja patrols to his presence. Naruto looked away from the annoyance with a grunt of a noise before speaking, "Kisa, let's go. We've lost enough time here wasting with this one. I don't feel like jumping through the trees like some sort of a monkey..." He reached for another toothpick.

He put the pick into his mouth, his teeth clacking onto the wooden stick not a moment later and securing it tightly.

"Brat..."

"Y-yes?"

"Get out of my sight before I simply decide to crush your throat!"

He looked back at her with a glint in his eyes. "I think that it would be amusing to watch you choke to death."

There was a squeak of surprise and fear coming from the blonde haired girl that he chose to ignore for his own sake.

"Naruto?"

"Hm?"

"You can really be silly sometimes... but I don't think I'll ever be bored in your presence." the tigress commented with an airy animal-like laugh before she turned her head around and looked over the young human female.

Her eyes narrowed. Something about the girl was bugging her greatly, yet the White Fang Tigress couldn't tell what it was. So she let it be, she would follow Naru-chan's words as long as they didn't get the boy killed.

"Hn, whatever you say..." Naruto said as he casually dismissed his partner's words with a flippant wave of his hand.

He looked at the girl's face once more with a dead sort of gaze.

Tsking his tongue, the red head briskly turned himself around and started to walk down the dusty trail road of Hi no Kuni again.

The white tigress followed in his steps behind him soon after, leaving behind them one little girl, dumbstruck in fear and saddened, alone with nothing to do and no plans for the future now that she lost that once chance to become a kunoichi again.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

**Play :** _Celtic Music - Cliffs of Moher_

_General Hi no Kuni... 51 miles out of Konoha_

Naruto was trudging down the dusty road leading away from Konoha in peaceful silence while playing with the toothpick in his mouth. He moved his hand up to his shoulder where he fixed his hold on the large scroll and the slightly longer than normal shinobigatana that were strapped across his back in an X like pattern before snorting.

He put his hands into his pants pockets as he looked up at the blue sky, ignoring everything around him, and the sounds of the girl's silent sobs in the distance.

' _What was that?'_ Naruto wondered after a few seconds of cloud gazing as he failed to kick the thoughts of the girl out of his mind.

 _'Those whisker marks on her face, they appear only when there's Kyuubi's chakra present...'_ He discretely glanced over his shoulder, looking at the girl with one black eye for a full moment before turning his gaze back up at the sky above them, _'I can only guess that she's the jinchuriki that the shit sealed the Kyuubi into..'_

He clicked his teeth irately.

 _'Sealing the fox to save the village at the price of my mother's and sister's lives...'_ Naruto thought inside his head, disgusted with the past.

He of course knew of the sealing of the Kyuubi that saved the Hidden Leaf Village from total annihilation. The titanic fox tried to crush him like an ant under its paws when it appeared in the middle of Konoha. Back then, Naruto had been knocked unconscious by the collateral damage the monster did and literally buried alive by the weight of destroyed houses and other structures.

It was nothing short of a miracle that his body had survived the damage without too many injuries sustained, physical injuries at least.

No one could call him perfectly sane anymore...

He had only come back to the realm of the living several days after the attack, still buried under a ton of rubble before he used one of the fuinjutsus seals his sweet mother had taught to him in order to escape the death trap. His chakra was dangerously low at the time and he was struggling to stay conscious, but he managed to overhear some of the ninjas talking about how the Kyuubi has been sealed into a random orphan.

' _She did look a lot like Kaa-chan did... It guess that it could be a side-effect of carrying the biju though, maybe she took on the traits of the previous hosts. Shit never did fully understand Kaa-chan's seals despite his prowess in fuinjutsu.'_

 _'My sister died because of the shit. Kaa-chan as well... and the jinchuriki was an orphan without any family worth of note...'_ Naruto thought about it while closing his eyes from the glare of the sun rising up to its peak in the sky before he took a deep breath of air through his nose. The inhaled air came back out of his mouth shakily a moment later.

She looked so much like his beloved Kaa-chan that it wasn't fair, he had nearly lost his grip on his temper and emotions.

Naruto had no doubts that the girl will grow up to be a beautiful woman one day, but she will most likely end up as a whore in a brothel, selling her body for money if she managed to slip away from the village.

The red head didn't care for the likeness to his mother that the girl had. He didn't care for the fact that she was burdened with the nine times damned beast. She could go and die in a ditch for all he cared. All of his family was already dead and long gone, their warm lights put out by the world that was filled with treachery and death, lies and manipulations, cruelty and discord. It was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of his life, the night that he would finally become a big brother.

But it quickly turned into a nightmare as soon as that man sacrificed his mother and sister.

And for what, the sake of that despicable village?

The thought made him angry and hateful, it made him want to destroy the place with all of his soul, to burn down their homes and kill the villagers for revenge, slaughter the ignorant imbeciles, to extinguish their beloved Will of Fire. Naruto absolutely despised Namikaze Minato. He had spent many a nights cursing the treacherous family member to the deepest parts of hell for sacrificing the only ones Naruto had cared for to save that worm infested cesspit.

He hated the Hidden Leaf Village, for they weren't worth his mother's and his sister's lives.

He hated his ancestor, Uzumaki Mito, for she had cursed his mother with the beast and that curse led her to her death.

He hated Senju Hashirama for founding that damned village!

He hated Uchiha Madara, for starting all of this mess with the Kyuubi.

He hated the one who freed the Kyuubi that night!

And most of all, he hated himself for being a worthless shinobi in his youth.

As a young boy, Naruto had never attempted to become stronger than what was necessary to keep up with his peers and the few friends he had.

After all, why should he bother with becoming a super strong ninja when his Kaa-chan was the strongest woman that he knew of (not that he knew that many at the time) and his step-father was hailed as the strongest ninja in the village! And because of his ignorance he had been unable to keep his mother safe.

He couldn't save the woman that gave him life and loved him unconditionally despite the social stigma that surrounded her as an 'outsider', and his own as a fatherless brat. He hated himself for failing to protect his little sister.

He was supposed to protect her and to watch his little Imouto grow...

The red head's downcast musings were cut off when a familiarly annoying voice reached his ears. The words were accompanied by the sound of someone running towards him, the pitter patter of sandals touching the ground bellow easily distinguishable from the sounds of nature surrounding them. "Wait a minute mister! Don't leave like that, please!" the little girl shouted at him imploringly in passing as she ran ahead of the duo.

Naruto took his hands out of his pockets and looked at her back blankly, no expression on his face.

"The little girl's got a death wish..." he heard Kisa mutter. She herself knew best that Naruto didn't joke around when threatening other people. He was a man of his word no matter what the situation was, he never went back on what he said he would do. If he said that he was going to kill you by crushing your windpipe, then he was going to kill you by crushing your windpipe, simple as that. He was like that, brutally honest and scary beyond normal measure.

The girl was annoying him, meaning that she would die.

Ah well, too bad then...

The young Kyuubi jinchuriki stopped in front of the duo before turning around to face them. She looked up at the red head's face, her own face set in a pleading expression and her blue eyes resolute. Naruto looked down at her with a cold gaze that made her skin crawl, the glance of promised pain and suffering should she continue with her actions.

Yet the girl still stood before him, blocking his path in a manner of speaking with arms opened and extended on both sides, a lax pose that lacked the finer points of ninjas but a resolve not to budge least her words be heard. He didn't doubt that he could force his way past her, but it was annoying when she kept pestering him like that.

Naruto disliked annoying things, and the people he disliked usually ended up dead or crippled... most of them dead.

He rolled his neck as he sent the girl a glare.

"What do you think you are doing brat? Do you want me to arrange you a meeting with the Death God so soon?" he said coldly.

A nasty shiver traveled down her spine hearing the coldness of the tone coming from the man, making Mito doubt her actions for a single moment.

Her face hardened.

No way she would back out now anyway. Its not like she had anything to go back to.

After a moment of tension, Naruto's familiar took a deliberate step forward. Seeing that the girl was ignoring her movements Kisa's eyes narrowed, her own annoyance now settling in. The tigress barred her fangs at the girl in a threatening snarl that made Mito squirm on her spot, but she didn't look away from those coal black eyes.

The staring contests going on between the two whiskered humans was resolved when Naruto sighed, bringing his hand up to and rubbing his forehead in consternation. ' _Kami, this week is just full of surprises... What joy...'_ the red head thought dully with a hint dry humor as he closed his eyes to think.

He opened his eyes again and looked up, starring at the carrier of the Nine Tails with a flat look of irritation on his face.

"Hmmm, this is certainly a surprise... Didn't think there was someone dumb enough to try the stunt you are pulling of..." Naruto commented with a dry chuckle as he signaled Kisa to stand down with a quick glance directed at the animal.

The tigress nodded as she moved back with her fangs still barred and ready to pounce.

Mito's eyes glittered with hope growing brighter at the change of his tone.

Naruto rolled the toothpick in his mouth from side to side with his tongue, lifting his chin up in thought. Placing his hands back into his pockets lazily, he spoke, "So tell me flankey, what is it that you want from me exactly?" the red head asked, his tone of voice much lighter then before. What could he say, he liked to see people show some spine and guts.

He paused and eyed the young girl up and down for a moment, making her squirm a little bit more, before adding humorously, "Or should I simply call you midget?" he finished with a small, ferocious grin.

Mito's eyebrow twitched in irritation before she sent the man a glare that had sent many of her classmates scampering of in fear in the past. Her height was a very sore topic for her...

"I'm still growing Tomato-teme!" the short haired tomboy cried out at the man indignantly, her cheeks puffing up in anger as she waved her fist in the air. She was _the_ shortest girl in her class, meaning that she was also the shortest kid in class as well, what with boys being naturally taller then girls. Still, whenever the other kids tried to tease her about it, she sent them to the nurse's office with a few teeth missing and several purple marks around their eyes, clan-kids or not.

Naruto thought it made her look cute, before his brain registered what she said.

Naruto was upon her in a second having moved faster then her eyes could see, smacking her above her head with enough force to rocket her face down into the dirt. She cried out at the sudden action as she ate earth.

"I _really_ don't like that name brat..." the red head said simply as he shrugged away the glare the girl sent his way.

Mito got back up to her feet quickly, dusting her knees and clothes from the dirt.

"Stupid jerk!" she muttered lowly, but both of the tiger affiliates caught it.

Naruto clicked his teeth, two small - yet larger then normal canines - jutting down his lips, "What's your name then shrimp?" he asked.

Mito quickly opened her mouth to respond to the question.

Due to this, the jinchuriki nearly bit off her tongue when her rational side took over, what little of it there existed, "Ah... my name is...is... its Ayame! Yeah Ayame!" the failure of a kunoichi quickly blurted out the first girl name that came to her mind as she tried to come up with a fake identity on the spot. Experience (unfortunately) told her it be best to keep her name a secret and Ayame-nee-san was always nice and kind to her, so might as well honor her nee-chan a little.

She was already missing the Ichirakus...

Naruto of course knew that was a lie, "Ayame..." he said slowly as he folded his arms over his chest, tapping a finger against his bicep.

A nod came from 'Ayame'.

Right... when the pigs fly.

"Just Ayame?" Naruto inquired of her, raising a red eyebrow with the question. Kisa mumbled something beside him but he ignored the tigress.

"Hai!.. just Ayame, yep!" Mito said as she nodded her head up and down a little too quickly.

She was a very horrible liar.

Naruto eyed the young jinchuriki before him with a faux-suspicious face, he had never bothered with learning the name of the Kyuubi jinchuriki before, "Hm, is that so?" he asked again.

Another nod.

"You don't look like an Ayame to me..." he trailed off blandly. Might as well play along with her little game for now. 'Sides, he never gave out his full name to people he just met either, he wasn't liked all too much in the ninja world.

Mito chuckled nervously, scratching her left cheek with a finger.

She smiled sheepishly at the man.

"No really, my name is Ayame! Really! Believe it mister!"

Naruto grunted gruffly in response as he rubbed his chin, "Right, whatever... if you are going to go around following me like a lost puppy, might as well do it where I can see you." he said calmly, his eyes never showing the girl any warmth.

"Yay, thank you, Tomato-onii-san! I'm going to become a bad-ass kunoichi in no time 'ttebane!" 'Ayame' exclaimed happily, pumping a fist into the air. She looked to be about ready to start doing a jig from how happy she was feeling when a sudden, sharp pain made its presence known to her. Little 'Ayame' yelped in pain as Naruto harshly flicked a small rock pebble at her forehead.

"Nani! That hurt!" she said as she looked up at the red head questioningly.

Naruto caught the look she sent him.

"Midget, you don't get to call me that! Are we clear!?" he said strongly.

His voice wasn't necessarily harsh, but truth be told it wasn't all that pleasant either.

'Ayame' rubbed her forehead in pain as she nodded meekly.

She had nearly forgotten that the man standing in front of her had mercilessly killed half a dozen people in cold blood effortlessly not even a few hours ago.

Naruto continued, his voice being just a tad bit softer as his lips quirked downwards into a thin frown, "There was only one girl in my life that had the right to call me that, and she died a long time ago kid. Call me Naruto if nothing else... I hate formalities..." he said as he shrugged the memories away for now. This wasn't the time for a pity party.

Mito looked down, understanding what he meant with the phrasing, "Sorry Naruto-san, it won't happen again." she said softly. She did feel guilty for bringing up bad memories. While she couldn't entirely understand what the red head was feeling, having never felt the love of a family, she could guess that it must pain him.

Naruto simply grunted again as he cleaned his teeth with the toothpick for a moment, "Whatever brat, just make sure it doesn't happen again. And you better keep up Short Stuff, I'm not going to stop just so that you can to take a rest..." he stated as he walked past the girl, Kisa keeping an eye on her.

Mito quickly scrambled to follow.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~  
**

**Play :** _Hana Wa Sakura Kimi Wa Utsukushi - Ikimono Gakari_

_Konohagakure no Sato, Hokage's office...  
_

" **What do you mean she may not be in the village?!** " sternly demanded the Third Fire Shadow as he read through the lines of the 'search for Mito' report in his hands, his pipe out of sight for once. He looked up and his eyes narrowed.

The poor sod dressed in regulation ANBU Black Ops blacks currently reporting to the leader of his village trembled in fear under the intense scrutiny of the Sandaime Hokage's withering glare. They had spent more then a good amount of time searching for the trouble making jinchuriki through the village and have literally checked every nook and cranny within those tall walls.

He had been the one to draw the short straw with his teammates and now here he was.

Sandaime mulled over his knowledge. Whilst the fuinjutsu barrier erected around the Hidden Leaf Village was more for detecting intruders and had its fair share of faults, partly due to its sheer complexity and partially because of the glaring lack of fuinjutsu users on the level of a true Uzumaki in the village, it could still be used for other purposes.

Such as to search for a certain chakra signature, if the signature was registered into the detection matrix, a tedious process, but a necessary one. Mito's chakra signature was registered in it for one, they have learned to keep their resident Uzumaki locked on after the last Kumo incident. By all rights, the young blonde should have shown up as a big bright red spot on the map due to the amount of chakra she had, however the system - and the map - had stayed blank.

The current watchers of the barrier had stated that this could mean one of two things. Either Uzumaki Mito was dead - a rather unlikely scenario seeing as the chakra residue in her chakra coils should be enough to detect a corpse as long as it was fresher than two weeks, not to mention that the burst of Kyuubi's chakra would been picked up by any and all sensors in the village.

...or she had simply left the territory that the barrier encased.

Needless to say, the Sandaime had not taken the information well.

"I'm sorry Hokage-sama, but that is really all I can say. She does not show up on the map, so either she is dead, in an area that blocks the sensors, like a compound, or she is not in the village." Hare reported.

"Get me every available tracker in the village with S7 level clearance!"

"Hai Hokage-sama!" The ANBU flickered away.

Sarutobi turned in his seat till he was overlooking the village. His hand jerked towards his pipe but he ignored the impulse.

"We must find her before something happens..."

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~  
**

_Northern Hi no Kuni Forest..._

Standing with both of his arms crossed over his chest in the middle of a very small forest clearing (that was barely 10 foot across from one side to the other), was Uzumaki Naruto, his eyes narrowed and glowing a deep burning red, the color of blood. Anger and hatred danced together within those red eyes.

The last male Uzumaki in this world had a large scroll strapped over his left shoulder, hanging horizontally down his lower back. The sheath of his sword was strapped over his other shoulder, placed so that it was easy to reach and pull out in a moment's notice. A series of low chuckles escaped the red head's parted lips, which were pulled up into a bitter smirk.

_A peaceful night, moon shining upon the village, in which a little boy kept bouncing on his feet in delight._

_His heart sank as a constricting feeling entered his chest, oppressive energy that he could sense appearing and disappearing in the distance._

_A thunderous boom echoed around the village, smoke filled the area, alarms rung and ninjas mobilized._

_A roar, a cry of destruction was unleashed from within the plume of smoke, blasting away people and buildings from the sheer force._

_A pair of enormous, murderous red eyes settled on him, a humongous claw rose into the air.  
_

Naruto let his mind wander as his head slowly inclined to the side, falling down to glare at the ground.

The last Uzumaki male scowled before he lazily cast a look towards the east where the third Kyuubi Jinchuriki was still sleeping soundly, like a little baby and nothing like a ninja he expected her to become. The little girl was resting in a small makeshift camp he had set up last night, located less then a pair of miles away from Naruto's current location.

The red head was keeping an eye on her through a chakra clone, so it wasn't like she was vulnerable or anything.

Naruto frowned as he plucked the toothpick out of his mouth.

He looked at the small wooden stick with his eyes before clenching his hand around it burning the toothpick to cinders, using his Katon (Fire) natured chakra. The red head let the left over ashes slip through his calloused fingers, the only 'imperfections' on his body. Scars never took hold on his body, he could get his entire arm seared off and, well... you get the point.

"Ayame, Ayame... At least she could have chosen a better name for herself."

Nobody answered his musings.

"Heh, I wonder just how did she manage to slip away from the village? I thought that they would have kept their jinchurikis under lock and key after..." he let his hand trail off in a random direction as he talked to himself, "..after Kaa-chan and the teme..."

The last living male Uzumaki clan member was truly baffled with the girl.

He wanted to know how did she manage to slip away from the Hidden Leaf Village like that, considering what she represented for their military power after the 'Kyuubi Incident'... no matter how much he hated remembering that night.

Iwagakure no Sato and Kumogakure no Sato, the two largest and most dangerous enemies that Konoha could face both had two biju in their possession, with their jinchuriki being able to enter Tailed Beast Modes. He knew about that because he had seen on more than one occasion the jinchuriki of the 4 tailed monkey using the beast's power.

If a war erupted, those 4 particular ninjas could destroy the Konoha's army on their own.

Well, it wasn't like he cared about the bastards in the tress!

Let them get blown up, they deserved it all in his opinion.

But... he wasn't about to let the bastards just take their little jinchuriki back to the cesspool of ignoramuses. She didn't deserved that frankly.

He was a heartless and cold bastard most of the time... well all the time really, he was actually kinda nice considering who exactly had raised him after his mother died, but he still had a heart in him. Oh sure, it was a shriveled and dry husk of a heart, but it was a heart nonetheless.

Naruto shook his head in a negative while he looked away from the part of the forest where 'Ayame' - as she so eloquently called herself - was and concentrated on his other senses, going deep into thought while wiggling his foot around and blissfully ignoring the grunts of pain and the string of curses that the action caused his ears to pick on.

Naruto glanced down at the body - a human body - lying beneath him and smiled his usual, bitter smile at the man.

The man lying on the ground beneath him growled at Naruto with his white, bloodied teeth that were barred in a pained snarl. Naruto didn't let the man form any real words, pushing down on his throat just a little harder.

The man was wearing blue pants and a blue jacket and a green flak vest on top, with the Leaf insignia etched into his forehead protector.

Naruto put another toothpick into his mouth and grinned down at the man. "Say now Toshiro-chan, would you know how did the jinchuriki manage to escape that cesspool of worms you call a village?"

He wasn't expecting an answer from the man. The Konoha ninja's throat was being held underneath one of Naruto's sandals, ready to be broken like a dried out twig at Naruto's whim. The son of Uzumaki Kushina could easily snap it in half with but a little application of force.

The man tried to fight back his grip with fervor, grabbing at his leg with both arms and pushing up in a last ditch effort, like he believed he could save himself from his fate.

Naruto snorted at that before holding his hand up, a sphere of brilliant blue energy swirling to life in his palm.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

_Konohagakure no Sato... Shinobi Academy_

While carefully concealing his presence from detection like an ANBU of his caliber was only supposed to, one Hatake Kakashi frowned to himself beneath his face mask.

His lone visible eye peeped through the small opening in the shape of an eye hole that had been installed by yours truly in the Academy Classroom 3B.

The small hole in the upper corner of the classroom was his very own smart addition to the decorum of that particular classroom. The silver haired jonin used this eye hole to spy on the genin teams that he was supposed to take under his wing, every year, for many years.

He ignored what the rest of the students in the room were doing and chattering about as he struggled with time, waiting for that blonde haired boisterous girl to enter the room. She was bargaining to lose her position on the team at this rate.

Maybe she was like Obito in that regard, naturally late for everything?

Even if she wasn't going to be a part of his team in the end, he still wanted to see and meet Minato-sensei's daughter, at least to offer her some little advice since he clearly wasn't going to be able to pass his sensei's teachings over a course of time.

He actually wondered why the Hokage had refused to give him the daughter of his sensei as a student. The Sandaime had been loftily vague last night.

He knew and understood why he couldn't meet with the girl earlier.

With the child being a Jinchuuriki of the _Kyuubi_ , she was, basically and to the point, a powerful instrument of Konoha and a dangerous political tool... from birth, since the news of the sealing had managed to leak through the cracks of the broken administration at the time of the Kyuubi's attack, when everyone was running around like helpless chickens trying to fix the mess.

The Third Hokage had barely managed to allow the girl to live through a semblance of a normal childhood in which she wouldn't be used as a tool of convenience at every point, but in order to do that he was forced to appease the civilian population of the village by keeping all of his shinobi away from Mito's upbringing.

That had lasted right until the academy, but from that moment onwards…

Yes, Hatake Kakashi, The Copy Ninja, The Son of the White Fang, had has cold feet from that moment forward.

What was he meant to say to the girl when he meet her? _'Hey listen here kid, I knew your father and he's the one responsible for you living a life alone, but I can't talk about it much because there's a law in place.. oh and by the way I'm an Anbu too so I can't tell you anything of who I am or what lies behind my mask or what I do for a living most of the time. Yeah, nice meeting you Mito-chan!'_ He inwardly rolled his eye at the preposterous situation as he continued to watch and spy through his eye hole.

He would wait there for the rest of the day if need be, but he was going to have some words with the girl.

Too bad nobody had bothered to tell him Mito had failed her exam... or him not bothering to check up on her.

**~~ Bloody Waves ~~**

**Play :** Celldweller - So Long Sentiment

_Northern Hi no Kuni Forest... Camp_

The rising sun, its shape a shining orb of gold, slowly peeked over the eastern horizon. Meanwhile, the early morning sky blended into beautiful patterns of orange and red colors, all of them livelier then normal. The cold morning dew, a reminder of the night, clung to various blades of grass like a pair of tired lovers clung to each other after a night full of fun, _if ya' know what I mean_. Numerous and various small forest creatures, cute animals and fuzzy critters, scurried about on the ground. The resident baby chicks of the forest chirped loudly for their parents up above in their nests, waiting to be fed. All in all, it was a very beautiful morning within the comfortable climate of Hi no Kuni.

However, it would be nigh impossible for you average Joe to notice the wondrous beauty of the skies from the middle of one of the densest forests in the world - a forest that was hailed both far and wide as a home of legends and mysteries that not even shinobi could explain to this day. The titanic trees of Hi no Kuni, bastions of life that called this place their commitment and steed acted as such good filters of light that one could barely see a brief glimpse of the sky above their heads.

With a not-so-quiet, unintelligent murmur of discontent escaping her lips, the young prison of the nine tailed demon fox slowly peeked open her baby blue colored orbs after a night of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements.

It was just her luck that what little rays of the sunlight did manage to make it through the lush canopy above her head ended up falling down upon and hitting her directly into the face.

Or to be more specific, into her eyes.

Young Mito reacted to this with a whine.

"Aw... stupid sunlight 'ttebane! Leave me be...!"

She made another noise of discontent in the back of her throat before closing her eyes and rolling away from the light's piercing gaze, not caring that she was rolling on the ground and that she might get dirty.

"T'is is muUUUUch better!" Mito yawned mid-roll. The blonde haired girl stopped her rolling when she was located about a dozen feet away from the horrid light. Mito then let the smells of the forest entertain her senses and clear her mind. Last night, before sleep had finally claimed her in its grasp, the reality of the situation that she was in had finally settled in.

"Stupid Konoha dattebane... Not like anyone will notice I'm gone.." Mito muttered to herself as she sat herself up and hugged her knees together.

Well... it was more like the newsflash had hit her directly in the face with all the force of a sledgehammer. She had been shocked at first and her body had trembled for a good while, but she didn't cry, not even once. She had no family to speak of that she could return to back in the village. She had no bonds to keep her tied with the place that resented her existence.

Who would even miss her, the village pariah.

And despite what Mito had been expecting to happen last night through it all, she hadn't felt lonely at all. In fact, it had been the very opposite, with Mito feeling like she finally had someone nearby to look after her and to hear them breathe as they sleep...

In all honesty, it had felt more like she was in a family that was on an outdoor camping trip in the woods and not, in fact, on the run from her village with a total stranger who had a temper and who might just as well kill her in cold blood as he was to talk to her.

Well, her view on family had always been a little screwed up.

All that Mito had for her were distant observations of others, she had never actually felt what it was like to be with someone who cared.

Sure her new sensei was cold and retracted and silent and broody like the Uke-teme, but he seemed okay enough.

And sure the large tiger kept looking at her as if expecting her to jump and try to eat it...

Wiping away the small amount of sweat falling from her eyes - they weren't tears! - Mito set herself up on her knees and looked around the camp. She easily spotted the small campfire in the middle of it before frowning cutely as her stomach made its needs known to her... and everyone else in the local mile radius.

Birds made noises as they ran away from this new and dangerous monster.

The blonde haired girl groaned as she rubbed a hand over her stomach.

Having wasted all of her ramen supplies the night before in some sort of a mock celebration she was absolutely starving right now. That, and it had only taken her one fall a few hours prior to show her how sleeping on a tree wasn't as easy as she had been led to believe.

Mito looked around the area searching for her backpack that may or may not just have one more cup of ramen in it! She was safe here, she knew that much. The camp was supposedly surrounded by several inky squibbles resting on tree trunks - things that were called seals - that Naruto-sensei had set up last night. The seals were linked together, forming a tight camouflage barrier - a genjutsu - that was very hard to spot and disturb since it was casted on the surrounding area and not on the individual shinobi, along other things that the red head hadn't had bothered with telling her about last night.

Not that she had been paying any attention to her sensei's words after the second sentence...

"Hungry, Short Stuff?"

"Kyaah!"

Her sensei suddenly, out of the blue, appeared beside her in a quick flicker of orange embers, causing the whiskered girl to release a very high pitched squeak of surprise. Mito actually jumped into the air from the sheer surprise at his sudden appearance before landing down on the ground again, right on her but.

"...What? Is there something on my face?" Naruto asked seeing that the brat was glaring daggers at him all of a sudden. It made for quite a funny scene in the back of his mind. The young girl's hair was, simply put, a big mess with strands of gold sticking at odd bends and angles in all directions, not having been brushed or ...whatever it is the girls do after waking up.

The end of his lips cracked up into a small smile, but he held it back.

"You! You scared me! Don't do that Tomato-sensei!" Mito pouted at the red head like a kid, crossing her arms over her barely developed chest and huffing only to receive a rock pebble hitting her straight against her forehead.

"Now now Shorty! Don't call me that! I thought I've made it clear I'll cause you pain whenever you call me that again..." Naruto grumbled at the girl with his arms crossed, leaning his body against the nearest tree, the toothpick partway in his mouth dancing through the air funnily.

Mito released a whine, just like normal kids her age do and brought a hand up to rub at the spot where the pebble had hit her, frowning at the taller human. Naruto-sensei's aim with those things was impeccable to say the least, and they hurt!

She pointed an accusing finger at him before pouting again, "You are a meanie sensei!" she declared boldly.

Naruto ignored her glare.

What, he really didn't like being called a tomato!

Time to get shit done.

"I won't be asking if you are hungry or not anymore Ayame..." the red head threatened the young Nine Tails Jinchuriki with a mocking smile on his face.

That smile made 'Ayame' start glaring at him in slight amount of embarrassment, hints of rose appearing on her cheeks as her stomach grumbled.

She opened her mouth, intent on saying that Ayame wasn't her name, that it was Mito, before she caught herself. She closed her mouth quickly least she blurted the truth out.

Right.. that was her 'name' now, the one that she had offered him yesterday after he choose not to kill her.

Mito feared that should her sensei learn of her true name, then he would leave her all alone again.

Everyone else has, so who was to say that the man wouldn't do the same.

She had grown attached to the man who had shown her the barest amount of attention rather quickly.

Her stomach growled out an answer for her, quite loudly at that, and Mito blushed scarlet once more before nodding her head quickly.

"Haiiii, can you give me something to eat please?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow at the girl and restrained the urge to chuckle at her.

He wasn't a mushy mushy sort of guy and he wasn't about to start joking with the girl like that, even if it was at her own expense.

Though he could see why it was an embarrassing situation for her.

Most women didn't like to admit that they had actual human needs like others.

In this instance for example, if a man was hungry then that was something that made a man a man and he would sate the desire with food as soon as he could.

But if a woman was hungry, then she was some kind of pig that ate a lot or a girl that starved herself to death.

It wasn't something that Naruto agreed with, nor did he care about it, but it was how human society was run these days. Then again, he didn't care about others and about a lot of other things, let them do what they wished...

"Here then eat this, it should sate your hunger for now girl." Naruto told her keenly as he reached a hand into his ninja pouch before tossing over a small purple pill to the girl who clumsily caught it, almost letting her breakfast fall on the ground as it bounced from her hands several times over.

Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and swallowed one as well, a small crack sound coming from his mouth a second later as the pill popped in his mouth.

No need to go hungry now right?

He saw her confusion and quickly explained it for the sake of shortening the time he needed to spend interacting with her like this.

Kisa was out hunting for her own food and he didn't like being in this situation.

"Simply pop it into your mouth and swallow."

Hearing that come from the man she had dubbed as her sensei, Mito blinked her does as she looked at the small thing in her hands.

That wasn't food! What kind of joke is this?

"What is it? Where's the food sensei?" Mito asked the red head, tilting her head to the side very familiarly.

"That's food." Naruto replied to the stupid question coolly, his black eyes blank as he looked at her.

Mito looked at the _food_ in her hands once more.

She deadpanned at the red head. "If its a joke... I'm not laughing sensei."

Naruto looked at his 'student' weirdly, clicking his teeth in irritation.

How the hell didn't she know what a food pill is.

Wasn't she taught about these things as a jinchuriki, since he figured that the leaf would want their little weapon to be strong and team friendly or whatever shit their Will of Fire blabbed on about.

"Its ...a food pill." Naruto answered the question shortly with a slow nod of his head, eyeing her in a strange light.

"A ...food pill?" Mito asked confusedly, fixing her hair just a tad bit with her hands.

She needed to make sure that she hard that right.

"Yes, a food pill."

"Ohhh," the whisker cheeked girl blinked at the little purple pill like a dummy before looking up at the red haired man again, her does boring straight into his own eyes.

The expression cutely confused was written all over her face.

"What's a food pill Tomato-sensei?"

Naruto's eye twitched at her use of that word again before he answered the question in a strained voice, holding back the need to throttle her.

"Its going to be your breakfast..." he spoke slowly like he was talking to an idiot.

"Oh!" she smiled brightly up at him in realization... he at least hoped it was realization.

"Why?" Well, guess not...

"Because I said so!" Naruto responded coolly again, his temper rising.

"Why did you say so? This doesn't look like food to me and I want food, real food! I want Ramen! Its the food of the gods!" Mito declared her belief boldly, mouth salivating at the mental imagery.

Naruto sighed at her stubborn attitude, the girl was already causing him headaches and he hadn't even known her for a full day.

But he wouldn't show it yet, won't show that she was getting under his skin.

He actually wanted to see if she could survive his training... If not, well he had always wanted to kill the Kyuubi permanently.

She could be his test subject for that.

Who said revenge was a dish best served cold?

"Well that's too bad, because its either going to be that or a nutrients bar."

Mito wrinkled her face at the offer, not sure if she should ask or not. Still, anything should be better then a fricking pill!

"And what's a nutri..n..utry-" she scrunched her face at the odd word, "nut-ri..ents bar?!" Mito asked as she got up on her own two feet.

"...You don't want to know, trust me."

"Uh... sure, whatever you say Tomato-sensei!" the blonde haired gaki chirped at her newest sensei cheerfully, her smile blinding and her eyes twinkling!

"Shrimp..." Naruto said simply as he flicked his hand at her, a small rock shooting forward from the palm of his hand.

"Ouchie! Where do you get these rocks from!? This isn't fair!" Mito demanded from him as she rubbed her forehead - which was in pain again -, looking at her sensei with a small glare, her face sporting a small but curious frown.

"Trade secret, now eat up!" Naruto ordered. He added in a mutter. "You'll need the strength if you want me to train you ...Short Stuff."

"Hai Tomato-sensei!"

Naruto grinned at the stubborn girl cruelly as he flicked another pebble at 'Ayame's' forehead, this time causing her to fall down on her back from the force of his throw, the small pebble shattering against her forehead and cutting into her skin.

She didn't sound like an Ayame at all.

**~~ CHAPTER END ~~**

**+Youtube** Tribute to Minato ~ The Phoenix By: **WhiteFang275**

 **+Fanfiction** Kitsune Sith Lord By: **VFSNAKE**

 **+Anime** Thermae Romae

 **+Youtube** Tribute to Naruto ~ Help Is On The Way By: **WhiteFang275**

 **+Fanfiction** Kill El Kitsune By: **The Swordslinger**

 **+Anime** Strike The Blood


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